How a Small Change Ruined Front Lot in Walt Disney Studios

I, like many Disney Parks fans, truly appreciate the music of a land. It’s perhaps the most important thing in a land or themed environment you don’t see, and that’s huge. Just like in films, a score can make or break it, in some instances it becomes so big that most people associate the first notes to the movie where they were first played, look at the Star Wars theme by the legendary John Williams, for example. Well, theme park lands are very similar, who doesn’t recognise the music from Main Street USA, Discoveryland or Frontierland? All these loops add so much to the experience by further immersing visitors in the storyline the land is trying to sell, be that of a turn-of-the-century town, a Wild West mining company or a Gun Club aiming for the moon. A Disney themed land should be a multi sensory experience: Vision, with the theming, architecture, greenery, characters, etc; Touch, feeling the wood or brick from the building or the metal from the cannon; Smell, with the fresh cookies from the bakeshop, or the freshly cut grass; Taste, while eating said cookies or the pizza from the Italian style restaurant; and of course, Hearing, with the horse drawn carriages, the steam train chugging across the park or, and here we go, the music, specifically chosen and many times written for that specific spot. When all this is achieved, the likelihood of remembering that exact moment for years to come goes up faster than the elevator from Hollywood Tower Hotel (still waiting for my room, by the way).

Walt Disney Studios Park, when it opened in 2002, wasn’t at the same level as its nearly perfect neighbour, the Disneyland Park. It lacked on theming, attractions and the overall quality that makes Disney, Disney. However, with all its problems, many of which in relation to the miserable budget it had to be built with, there was one element that blew everything else out of the water, and that was the music. The moment you stepped into, what probably was the best area in the entire park, the Front Lot, scores from classic films welcomed you. The scores, merged into one, truly brought this entire area inspired by the Hyperion Studios to life, and one small trick made it even more successful. Depending on when you were in the land, the music could be very different. That’s because throughout the day, 3 different hour long music loops would be played: morning, afternoon and night. Each of these had different soundtracks from movies, offering a different experience at each part of the day. During the morning, the music was energetic with theme renditions from movies like Gone with the Wind, Exodus, A Bug’s Life, The Musketeer, Indiana Jones, Laurence of Arabia and West Side Story. In the afternoon, the music evolved into more calm, yet still somewhat energetic tracks with themes from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Wizard of Oz, the Godfather, Cinema Paradiso, Casablanca, Titanic and others. As the night started to fall on the Studios, a calmer atmosphere was put in place with music from films like You Only Live Twice, Lady and the Tramp, High Noon, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Once Upon a Time in the West.

These classic soundtracks brought Front Lot to life during the early morning, filled with energy all the way to the night becoming calmer, accompanying the tired guests making their way to the hotels so they could do it all over again the next day. These soundtracks made the whole area enjoyable to just stick around and enjoy the ambience, much like on Main Street USA, I could spend so much time here with the minutes ticking by… If there’s one thing Walt Disney Studios Park didn’t miss the mark on, was the music, and if there’s one thing Walt Disney Studios Park didn’t need replacing was, you might’ve guessed it, the music… In 2022, a new loop was introduced, the old days of changing tunes according to the time were gone, as now only one, shorter loop played over and over and over again. The new soundtrack as you enter the Hyperion Studios in Los Angeles set in the 20’s and 30’s now plays music from the Avengers, Finding Nemo, Frozen, Toy Story, Ratatouille and other Disney properties you can find in the park. The age of these movies has nothing to do with the problem, in fact most of the old soundtracks came from films released in the past 50 years, much later than the 20’s studios the land is based upon, but they aren’t nearly as timeless, classic or even magical.

The core of the problem is the choice of properties, let’s look at it from another perspective: Main Street USA is themed around a turn-of-the-century town, and its music complements that theme. What if, instead of that, music from attractions and properties further into the park played here? You would be walking down the vibrant street while hearing the famous tunes from Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom Manor or Buzz Lightyear. These are spectacular soundtracks, but it doesn’t work… Disney is treating Front Lot, which should be the equivalent of Main Street’s first half, as Walt Disney Studio’s Fantasia Gardens, however you’ve already scanned your ticket and made your way into the park. I know I’m being quite a bit nitpicky but these are things Disney used to care about, small things that made enjoying your time while doing nothing, easy. To end this rather long rant about background music, the new loop just doesn’t fit the location, so while BGMs are supposed to complement a themed environment, it now takes us from it, or at least me.

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If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around! Here, you can check the Morning Loop and Evening Loop, if you want to go back a couple of years. While I don’t have much hope for either the return of these or the replacement of the current one, you never know, just this week paper maps have returned to the entrance of Disneyland Park! I’ve been meaning to make this article since they were changed, but never sat down and wrote it, until today. And now, That’s a Wrap!